Your hands were cold on my back,
And they soothed my scalding, sweaty skin.
You shivered in your cocoon of sheets,
And I warmed you with my knees and hips.

I am the cold one, always the cold one.
Who’s toe’s are blue and bitten,
Who’s hands send chills and cause frosty withdrawal.
I am the silent one in need of warming and careful heat,
Always the cold one. The blue one.

But your hands are cold on my back,
and under the front of my shirt.  Freezing hands.
You steal my heat, greedy as I am to give.
I give you everything thing i have.

Now you are the blue man
and I am burning.

Wood smoke on a frosty February air,
Let it drift through my window and
interrupt my thoughts,
Tinted with the frozen taste of forest mildew—where you once held my hand when we stepped over a fallen log.
Red wine head ache beat my temples raw,
And the heater rattles in the walls so I
toss and turn.
I do not think of you often; but now I do, wrapped up in yellow blankets and breathing deep the snow falling air.
The ping, ping, ping
of an over fulled drain,
it beats a metronome against the aluminum roof next door.
I sleep with the window open to catch the sent of burring birch,
or hardened pine,
I warm my senses and drift away
to a time before February froze the air.